The Road Home

Hello all.
I have obviously been a little negligent when it comes to entertaining you all with my blog recently. And I am sorry for that. Unfortunately, when the novelty of living in Suriname wore off for me, it became harder and harder for me to think of appropriate things to talk about in this public space. As I got used to the place, I became more and more occupied with making friends and the drudgery of routine. Thus the most interesting topics for me became some interaction I had with some neighbor, or whether I needed to go do laundry in the river today.

It is safe to say I have spared you all some very uninteresting posts. So, when it comes down to it, I was really doing you all a favor. I'm so generous.

Alas, the time has now come to end this blog. For some weeks now, I have been a RETURNED Peace Corps Volunteer. The last few months were a blur, as I struggled to finish my work and to get as much as I could out of social relationships I had formed. I am proud to say, the construction of the pour-flush toilets did, in the end, get completed. We were awfully close there. I had a goodbye meeting with my villagers, in which we opened the toilets for business. Now it's up to them to keep them up!

My village also threw me a little party. It was very nice of them, and the band that I was a groupie of, Tranga Faya, to hold this party for me. I cried the whole way through it, and was a terrible party guest, but that is what happens when the realization hits that you have invested all of your time and energy into something that is about to end abruptly.

And so, to all you faithful readers, it's been swell. I hope you learned something about Suriname, and I hope you saw some awesome pictures.

Until next time,

Alissa

Carnival. WOW.

Hello All.

I just got back from a week of vacation in Trinidad and Tobago. Trinidad and Tobago are two islands in the caribbean, but they are one country. We stayed on Tobago, which is a tiny island. By the end of the week we had literally driven around the whole island and explored almost every beach. Tobago has about 50,000 people on it, but you wouldn't believe it if you went there. It has a very small-community feel. Trinidad had the bulk of the population, somewhere around 1.5 million, and many Trinidadians (that's the official term) go to Tobago for a relaxing vacation. Most of the country's income is from oil and gas exports, as opposed to most of the other Caribbean Islands, which contributes to the country's increased wealth and less-developed tourism.

But we went there for CARNIVAL! Many countries have events for Carnival, but from what I understand, this one is the real thing. (Is that true??) Anyways, for Trinidadians, preparations for the carnival start around december, when this year's most popular Soca music goes up for evaluation. The artists spend the next two months performing their songs and the whole thing culminates in discovering the winner about two days before the carnival. This music is everywhere.

We flew from Tobago to Trinidad for the event itself. Monday morning, starting at 3 AM, is an event called "J'ouvert." People have usually paid to get into one of the "bands" that has a set route along the streets. A band will have a giant music truck, an open bar truck, a toilet truck, and sometimes even a breakfast truck, and you just walk alongside them. We did not pay to get in, but we just followed one band around all night. And as you walk, you spray paint at each other, throw mud, alcohol, whatever you have. It's one big mess. And a whole lot of fun.

That ended about 8 AM. Then people go home and wash up. (We didn't have a home in Trinidad, so we just stayed dirty.) Starting around 10 AM on monday is the rehearsal parade, which is much like walking around with a band at J'ouvert only without mud. You can also pay to get into one of these. Again, we did not. Some people are already wearing their costumes, most are wearing the skimpiest clothes you have ever seen people wear in your life. This goes until nighttime. At this point, my friends and I had to go home because we had a flight.

But, no rest for the weary! Starting about 7 AM tuesday morning, the bands are out in full costume, and they parade around ALL DAY until nightfall. This is the event you can see on TV fairly often. You should find some videos on youtube. There are smaller versions of this in every city of Trinidad, and there was one on Tobago that we attended. And then there was much drinking and dancing after nightfall. You have to party hard because starting at midnight is Ash Wednesday, and you have to start repenting all the sins you committed at Carnival.

All in all, it was a crazy week, full of parades and Soca music and beaches and snorkeling and seafood. I had a wonderful time and I am starting to think I should take up residency in Trinidad. What a great place!

See you all next time!

Yep.

Just a heads up, I have uploaded a couple of pictures to Picasa. Check those out.

It's february, everyone. That means my time in Suriname is getting short! I am down to 5 months left. Everyone here is starting to look for jobs or schools to apply for. All of our staff is overworked and thinking only about things that they need to do to close the Post. A lot of staff members have been looking for other employment and many have quit and left the remaining people with even more work. It's getting crazy over here.

With that said, if anyone wants to offer me a job, I'm open to suggestions.

More updates coming up!

yup...

Merry Xmas everyone!
This year's Christmas is feeling a little bit more lonely than last Christmas. This might have something to do with the fact that almost every PCV is currently traveling either in America or somewhere in the world, off with their families. There are about 6 of us left in the country. It feels very lonely in the office right now.

But we have decided to have a good time together. We are all going to enjoy being by the poolside of the residence inn, enjoying a beverage or two. If we go dancing sometime this week, I'll be wearing my new Surinamese skinny jeans with the bleached and torn fabric. Yes. That's right. Skinny jeans. Now all I need is a neon colored bedazzled shirt to go with it. That's my goal for this time. So, as you can see, we are going to do Christmas Peace Corps style. We may not be opening presents or baking cookies, but we have secret santa and a potluck dinner. Eat that, people that are going home!

I'm a little bit jealous.

At least I get Kersbrod. Yum.

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Yes... I'm famous.

Just so you all know, I am now officially famous.

Recently one of my bosses has been obsessed with trying to get some media out to the interior to see what the Peace Corps is doing out there.  He has been working tirelessly to this effect, and eventually convinced four people from the US Embassy and two reporters to visit my site as well as two others along the river. I played host to all of them about a week ago. I made sure their presence was announced, I got them a meeting with my head captain and some basias, I made sure people would be around to represent the various sites they wanted to see: the school, our barbershop, the tourist shop, and the "solar powered movie theater" in the meeting house. All of these sites have solar panels, and I work with all of the people that were involved in those projects.

It was stressful! I was running around for at least a week before they came to my village to make sure everyone was on the same level and knew what their roles were when the news came to visit them. But as a perk, after they had gotten the full tour, they took me with them to the tourist camp. So I got to be a tourist and I even got to visit the other villages and get led around by the volunteer that was hosting there. Plus a free ride into town!

Anyways, as a result of this fiasco, my village got some exposure! Here is what I've seen so far:

An article based on the interview with the head captain of Nieuw Aurora.
http://www.starnieuws.com/index.php/welcome/index/nieuwsitem/13145

Pictures at least in two places:
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/peace-corps-volunteer-kispersky-assists-native-womens-organization-photo-141522762.html
http://topics.wsj.com/subject/s/Suriname/4016/photos/3f6f1022d2ec49cc8588373bca005e02#photoId%3D4

 So yeah, I'm teaching people how to run a store in the Wall Street Journal! What have you done to change the world lately?

Enjoy!

Solar Panels Rock

Lets just say that I'm over living hard-core. I used to kind of regret that I had electricity at my site, because I wanted to be able to go home and tell everyone that I lived in a place with no running water and  no electricity and then I could expand on all the hardships I had endured. Then I could feel good about how hard core I am.

As it turns out, that stuff really doesn't affect your every-day life. Any life you choose to lead, if you lead it for long enough, it just becomes normal. (I noticed that when mom came to visit and she kept hitting her head on my doors. She just couldn't get over how short they were. I had completely forgotten how annoying that was. I had just gotten used to it.)

But for the last two months, the generator in my village has been broken. That means no electricity at all. That means no charging your cell phone. That means at 7 PM, if you don't light a candle or a lamp, you can't see anything inside your house and you're scrambling around to find the candle or the lamp. That means you can't charge the batteries in your headlamp and your camera. It means no computer, no movies, no entertainment other than the company of other human beings. It's just really annoying. I have lived with no electricity now for two months, and have gotten used to the lifestyle, just like I have with all changes that came with living in the interior. I have taken to washing myself by candlelight, and eating dinner with a lamp at my side. But there is one thing I really can't get used to. Always having to get things charged with people that have a generator. I dread the day, every four days, when it comes time to charge my phone and I have to leave my phone's side. And then there's a 50 percent chance the person won't actually stick the phone into the charger properly, so maybe it won't get charged at all. AND the general price for charging your phone is 1 SRD.  There is nothing good about charging your phone elsewhere. It is lame.

So, I have decided that I have done my time. The hardship of having no electricity is not cool. Please, dear god, make them fix the electrical network in my village in a timely manner, and may I find a decent amount of lighting in my house from approximately 7 to 11 PM once again. Thanks.

Speaking of which, the solar panels that I have installed have become incredibly useful. That's how I'm powering my laptop right now. That's how, one boring night, I powered the projector that played an AIDS education movie for the whole village to see in the village's meeting house. (Peace Corps moment, anyone?)

If we had functioning speakers that could overcome the loudest peanut gallery I've ever heard, I would play movies that way more often. It was almost perfect except that we couldn't hear anything...

So here is my ode to solar panels. In a place where there is no electricity, they gave a person who cannot live without her iPod, camera, laptop, headlamp, phone and various other appliances, a little hope. Thank you, solar panels, you rock.

A Sad-Face Post

My mother just left.

Its a sad thing to realize that the visit from your mother that you have been anticipating for a whole year, is now a thing of the past. What will I have to look forward to now?

But we had a great two weeks. Mom's plane landed in Suriname at night. That next morning, we got up bright and early to get on our bus and then our boat to the interior. Mom got a pretty sweet deal, and by that I mean that she didn't have to pay for her ride out, because I had chartered the car and the boat in order to bring three sets of solar panels back out into my village. (And, it made me feel good, because my mom got the impression that I was working very hard. Double win!)

Once in my village, we were confronted with a plethora of ceremonial stuff revolving around the recent death. I had known the guy that died. He died while I was in the city during the lessons we were getting on how to set up solar panel systems. So every night that my mother was there, my villagers were "breaking the day," which is to say that they played loud music all night and at least a handful of people were guarding the body throughout the night. Someone has to guard the body, or else Jaguars will steal it, as I was told. Seriously.

Still, mom got a once in a lifetime opportunity to witness ceremonies that few people get to see, so she was incredibly lucky! We never did stay up long enough to witness the young hoodlums and their dirty dancing, which was something mom was always curious about, but really, we all know what that looks like, and it's not pretty. On the other hand, I was being told that my lack of attendance at the ceremonies was being monitored and that I might be asked to pay a fine of soft drinks or rum if I didn't show up at some point. I got out of that this time around, but I think I'll have to start going if there are any more deaths.

On day one I took mom around all of Tutu and showed her the highlights. The school, the soccer field, the landing strip. We had to stop every ten seconds for me to introduce her to people and to have a quick chat about her marital status. We were tired by the end of that day. I also took mom to Gunzi and we met the captain there. We checked out the tourist camp and chatted with some people. Mom saw her first Koni-koni, which is a rodent with legs like a rabbit. Another day, a lady from my village took my mother and me with her to grounds. We helped her cut a little patch of rice. Then we carried things on our heads on the way home. A highlight. I'm sad we never took a picture of mom with the piece of wood on her head. Mom witnessed the processing of rice from start to finish, and she saw half of the process to make cassava bread. She saw people in Gunzi pounding Maipa seeds but I don't think I pointed it out to her.

Meanwhile I was working on stuff for the solar panels and going to the shop with some women that sell things to tourists, and had meetings with people who came from the city, and even got word that a project of mine was funded. A huge number of outside things were going on. Needless to say, mom got the wrong impression of how active I usually am in the village. But hey, it made me look good, so I can't complain.

All too soon, (and I was admonished for taking her away from the village before she knew everything), it was time for our trip back to the city. On the same day that we traveled, we went directly to a party at the American Ambassador's residence. My mom met the Ambassador, my PC Country director, and various staff. She also got the chance to meet some of the volunteers. The next day, we did our best to tour the city, not getting very far because of our meandering pace. She got to experience the enormous market, and the grimy Saramacca Straat, where all the people from my area hang out when they come to the city. On the next few days, we saw some of the prettier areas of town. Among them the presidential palace, the tourist area, and the palm garden. We were taking the little ferries across the river and we got very familiar with some of the bus lines during this time. I even took her to a meeting with one of the partners I work with in the city. We did a day trip to see the butterfly museum in the outskirts of town, we went hiking in a nature reserve, and we hung out with the dolphins (pink underbellies!!) that live in the river.

And now that it's all over, I can't believe that it is. It will be one whole year before I see mom again. But I'm glad we had a good time and I hope that she will remember her trip fondly. All of you people that opted out of coming to see me, I hope you see that you royally missed out.

I'm posting some more pictures as well. Ta-ta!

Yeah...

First, I believe an apology is in order. I seem to have fallen victim to the disease most blog-writers eventually succumb to. I have not written for a really long time. Forgive me. Things are interesting to talk about when you're new to them, but as you get accustomed to your surroundings, talking about them becomes boring. Telling newcomers the same stories over and over again is no longer interesting. Instead, I want to talk about my work relationships and my every day problems, much like you want to talk about yours. And I know that stuff is less than interesting. And maybe this blog is not a good outlet for me to rant about those kinds of topics.

In other news, my mother is visiting me right now! In fact, she motivated me to write this blog, so we should all thank her. In an effort to update about life here, I would like to say that my friend Milk really did die. I would like to think that I did not jinx him with my previous blog about his narrow escape from death. So no morbid jokes please. I now have another cat. Her name is Godio (boots), and she had already had two previous houses before she came to mine. Sadly she will probably stay in Suriname when I leave, so that will make a total of four homes in her life. I hope we are not damaging her mentally by shipping her around so much. As an American, I worry about these things. Saramaccans would probably not waste time on these ideas. Even if Godio was a human. They like to go with the flow. It's a good way of living. Anyways, Godio and Milk are very different and I am getting used to it. Milk was pretty reserved around people but when being petted would be very into the experience. Godio is a very friendly cat, very cuddly. She doesn't like you touching her ears, however. Or you touching her much at all, unless she is the one that approached you. She does not like to wrestle like Milk used to. (I admit, I may have caused that. I just couldn't help bugging him until he would swat at me.) Godio will just get up and go somewhere else. It is very disappointing.

Some other things that are in my life right now:
I just got three separate groups in my village solar panels
I am going to be involved in a group of trainings being offered in my village. How to fix your own sewing machine, how to recycle materials and make profit off them, simple business skills, etc, all part of one huge grant we recently got awarded.
I teach English. (ugh, I hate this one)
I teach computer skills.
I help 6 women with their store full of hand sewn goods.
And I am trying desperately to interest the women's group in my village in working with me to help them start an income generating activity. ( I think I want this more than anyone else in the village, so it probably won't happen.)
I'm also a part of an attempt to begin selling solar lanterns in the villages. They don't use batteries or gasoline, and are thus a climate-change-conscious choice.
If I can interest people, I'd also love to start some kind of waste management in the village. Still in the concept phase.

But as you can see, my life in Suriname has changed. I am no longer just observing. I have become an active member of society. It feels good to be able to say that.

Stay posted for loads of pictures.
Cheerio!

English Lessons: Every Volunteer's Nightmare

We all encounter it now and again in our various sites: You are just hanging out, minding your own business, when someone you barely know will come up and say, "Hey, you're the Peace Corps person, aren't you? Why don't you teach english?"

Responses to this are numerous:
1. You don't know me, so what do you know about whether I'm giving english lessons.
2. If I'd wanted to teach english, I'd have gotten real money to do it elsewhere.
3. Even if I do offer lessons and take time out of my day to hold a lesson, I might get the occasional visitor, but I will not get anyone to come in succession every week, and therefore any progress that could be made with people would be almost nonexistent.

Despite the validity of these arguments, I have been bullied into offering lessons. I refuse to go sit somewhere at a scheduled hour, but I tell people that they can come to my house any time, and I'll offer them a lesson. Usually no one takes me up on the offer. But the other day, I had my first student. It was a humble beginning, what with both the teacher and the student being inexperienced at playing school. But I managed to make her repeat the alphabet until she could say all the letters. Then I taught her phrases like Good Morning, My Name is ____, etc. She was fighting the derisive comments of my neighbor (this is typical Elsa) and the attempts at conversations being made by this other dude (that was just rude), and then we paused the lesson for a good while to argue with the guy about some event that happened at least ten years ago. But my student bravely soldiered on through the adversities of learning english in the jungle. If she ever comes back, I'll make her go over what I taught her the first time.

I am chalking this one up as a win. It's going on my trimester report.

In-Service Training

Hello Everyone!

I have come to the city for In-Service Training. The SUR 16's (those who came to Suriname a year before I did) had what is called their Close of Service Training. Their departure is so close they can smell it. When the 16's leave, there will be no more replacements, so there will be only 20 peace corps volunteers in Suriname left. We 17's are not thrilled about this, but I guess it will bring us closer, so that's nice. In any case, it'll be a huge transition for me. Unlike most other volunteers in Suriname, I have what I like to call a Site-Mate. There's another volunteer living about a two minute walk away from me. We have dinner every day. In addition, there is a couple who is employed by the Peace Corps as response volunteers, whom I also see almost every day in my village. All three of those people will be leaving around June. After that, I spend my next year being the only Peace Corps Volunteer in my village. That is generally the norm, but will be a new experience for me. I think I will find myself taking more trips up and down the river to go see my coworkers in other villages.

And now for a little tribute to my cat. As some of you might know, I have a cat named Milk (aka Meiki) living with me at my house. He has been my best friend, and occasionally my only consolation when I have felt all alone in a strange place with nobody to listen to my complaints. Milk is my buddy. We spend the evenings cuddling. He likes to annoy me by jumping onto the lids of my meat buckets (buckets originally meant for exporting meat, but now used to keep rats out of my food) right as I am about to open them. He likes to sit on my lap when I'm eating breakfast and he enjoys surveying the land from the highest vantage points in my house. I didn't realize how much I like having him around until he nearly died. Recently, my cat got extremely sick. He had eaten a poisoned rat. He was fine in the morning, and all of a sudden, he began throwing up. Then he threw up only bile, and then he was retching without having anything to throw up anymore. By the end of the day he was motionless, hiding under my bed. Later that night, he stumbled pathetically outside and fell into the weeds. When I tried to force him to eat things, he whined at me and moved further away. I got the hint and left him alone. That night he didn't come back. In fact, he didn't come back the day after either. Or the day after. I was certain he had died. That's when I realized how much I love the little bugger. I was in serious distress over losing him, and (I will admit), I cried quite a bit that day. Then, at 11 PM on that second day, he stumbled in and cried at me to wake me up. He was skin and bones, and he slept on the floor, which he never does. But he proceeded to recover! I got to laugh at him during those days of recovery for being an old man and not being able to jump onto my bed anymore. But in the meantime, he's back to his old self, and all thoughts of losing him have faded into the background.

I hope everyone back home is passing the time and making the best of it! Thank you to everyone who has spent precious time and effort to send me a package. Getting a package is one of the most exciting experiences of living here.

Work Work Work

Hello all,
Here I am again. It doesn't feel like it's been all that long since I've last written. After all, I was in the city this time last month. It definitely does not feel like Christmas here. Instead of the smells of cookies and pine trees, you get a lot of the smell of fireworks. Every store here is selling giant quantities of fireworks. The president of Suriname mandated that one must not shoot them before the 27th of December so as to minimize injuries, but starting about a week ago, I have been hearing the occasional crack of an explosive going off. The sound has been getting more and more frequent, and I am assuming it's all building up to New Years Eve. I'm told there are so many fireworks going off at midnight that you can't hear anything. I, myself, have purchased the occasional firework to contribute to the madness. Just to feel like I was part of things.

Moving on, I'd like to spend some time on the project work that has been going on since I've been getting a lot of questions about that lately. But first, I'd like to provide my readers with a frame of mind with which they might understand what we're up against here in Suriname. I came across this website while I was doing some research, and what I found shocked me. Although I shouldn't have been all that surprised. Anyways, here's the site:

http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/suriname/#starting-a-business

The site ranks countries by their ease of starting a business. Suriname's process takes an average of 680 days. It costs a huge amount of money. Suriname is ranked one of the least new-business-friendly countries in the world. 158 out of 183, to be exact. The whole website has some very cool information. I recommend checking it out if you've got some time on your hands (and I take it you do since you're reading my blog).

So there you have it. Suriname is a hostile environment if you are trying to get anything done. We Peace Corps Volunteers are all fighting this issue as we try to push our projects to completion. With that in mind, here's an update on the notorious Toilet Project:

My village has all of the materials necessary to build these little structures. There are some questions as to how much cement we need and whether we should buy the flush part of the toilet (as opposed to just the bowl, which is common in these parts) in case there will be a functioning water system to get hooked up to, but all in all, those little details can be worked out when we get to that stage. Right now, the village must get it's butt in gear, and provide the manual labor that it has promised to contribute to the project. We have spent many a day manually shoveling sand from the middle of the river into a boat and then onto the dock, and then to it's final location. If you have any idea how much sand you need to make thousands of cement blocks, and you compare that to the average amount of sand one person can carry on their head, you will realize that this is a big project. And we completed that. We even made the cement blocks already. Again, hours of manual labor are required to mix the cement, pour it into a mold, stamp the cement into the mold with a mallet-like piece of wood, set the new stone out to dry in the sun, and use the same mold to make another stone. You can make about a hundred stones in a day's worth of work. We made thousands all together. And we have dug seven gigantic holes, which in itself has been a big step only because choosing a location for a toilet is a very political process. You'll never get 100% buy-in. To this day I have a guy complaining that there is a toilet-hole in front of his house that he is planning on filling back in. My major road-block is the attitude that you can just take the initiative to ruin a project, but it is not common after that to find an alternative route to completion. People will put their own desires first, and the conflict which then ensues with the goals of the project forces the project into stagnation.

So, here we are, in the middle of this project, and we have come to a stand-still. It's nobody's priority to do work for no pay, and since people are busy with "making money to prepare for the holidays," as I was told, if anyone is available to do work, they will refuse to work because some neighbor of theirs is not doing any work. Many conversations with villagers have provoked my anger on this matter. The unfortunate reality is that nobody is invested in this project enough to step up and do work on their own accord. And although I would love to be that person, I actually don't know how to place the stone blocks for the toilets, and am thus physically incapable of stepping up to do any work. So I rely on my counterpart. And, well, he's not exactly on good terms with this project now that people have accused him of only working on it when there was money to be made. Which is kind of true. So, politics have put a temporary stop to my work. But I have faith that progress will be made yet. I will not give up!

And now for another note: The Blue Ball Project has started! In a previous blog, I mentioned that some of my coworkers were working on a project to get the indestructible balls into the country. Well, they came through! My village is hoping to receive 20 of these soccer balls. We are planning to get a person who knows soccer to teach some life skills while holding soccer camps. Any donations to this effect are very much appreciated. I can honestly say that the biggest help I, as a PCV, can do in my village, is to educate. Aid is a very controversial thing out here, since most of the aid that has been done in my village previously, is now broken, or locked up in some storage space, or has been stolen. Large and complicated electronics (like computers) are bound to live a short and unproductive life when donated. Also, that kind of aid perpetuates a mentality of waiting to do anything on your own because you might just be getting it for free eventually. This mindset is already popular and is hard to eradicate in my village as it is. What works, though, is the education. Because it has long-term effects on the people involved. Which is why I like the idea of being a Volunteer. I am the only aid worker here that has the time to share perspectives and explain motives. So, my point is, this is a project that I can really get behind. If you feel the same way about it, please check out this link:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=568-133

Ok everyone, this blog has gotten very long. I will stop overwhelming you all with information now.

Peace Out!

The Adventures Continue

Hello everyone! I've come back to the city for Thanksgiving. Coincidentally, November 25th is Surinamese Independence day, so I'll be experiencing that one in the city too. The ambassador is hosting a thanksgiving party that we have been invited to as well. It will be a fun week.

Back at site, I have been having a good time. As it turns out, I am pretty good at speaking the language already. I found this out on my adventure with Baa Belly. Baa Belly is my neighbor. He is something like 90 years old and he takes care of me with bush medicine when I'm feeling sick. (Side note: The other day I had a pretty bad cold and Baa Belly came over with an orange and spent a long time explaining exactly how to squeeze the juice out of it and then how to strain the seeds out of the juice and then to put sugar into it and then how to drink it. All for a glass of orange juice. Some things are just universal I guess. When you're sick, you drink orange juice.) Anyways, Baa Belly has family in another village on the river, one where there is a Peace Corps Volunteer as well. He probably has family in almost every village because I am not kidding you when I say he must have like a hundred children by many different women.

So Baa Belly was going to travel to this village for a ceremony called Limba Uwii (Clean the Leaves). It's one of the many things that are done after someone dies. After much conversation, people convinced me that I should go too, since I had never seen one before. However, they made a big deal about me not leaving Baa Belly's side. And how when someone brings you to a place, he is responsible for you and you must not go off on your own. One guy came over to my house just to tell me that I shouldn't travel because you never know when a crazy guy will come and stab you. I just sort of ignored his advice... But all this hype about sticking with Baa Belly turned out to be completely false. As soon as we got out of the boat, I told Baa Belly that I had a Peace Corps friend in the village, and that was about the last time I saw Baa Belly. He went off and did his thing and I went off and did mine. After the second day, when we were supposed to go home together, Baa Belly went as far as to tell me to look for my own boat home because he was going to stay a few more days. I was very surprised. Why did everyone make such a big deal out of sticking together?? I may never know.
Before getting there, I had convinced two other PCV's to come to the ceremony with me, and two others were within walking distance of the village, so we all got together and it was a party. You can imagine the already tiny house filled with hammocks. A Limba Uwii ceremony starts early in the morning. Everyone in the village gets together and literally cleans the paths that lead to the river. They do yardwork. But it's cooler because you do it with machetes. When they collectively decide that they are done weeding, there is a communal river bath. A few things go on throughout the day after that. Someone has killed jungle meat and this is made into a soup that is distributed with cassava bread throughout the village in the evening. They also make a beverage out of boiled sugar cane. This will be consumed the next day. In the evening, there is music playing in the common area. As in, people are drumming and singing. Everyone is all dressed up and the young men are drinking beer at the Wankies. No one really dances except for the kids. Later they begin playing Saramaccan music through speakers and around 12 to 1 am, you see a few adults starting to dance. There will be electricity and music until the sun comes up around 6:30AM. Being one of the few females in Saramacca that drinks, (drinking is associated with promiscuity), I get a lot of free beer at events like this. I was quite drunk by the end of the night and stayed up till 3 am. The next morning, we got all dressed up again and around 9 AM, the real ceremony starts. They call it the Puu Ajoe. An Ajoe is something like a spirit that lingers around, and the ceremony is done to release the spirit so it can go away. There is a group of old men drumming and a group of women with their heads covered in a white koosu, dancing around a circle, or just dancing, and often just standing. All kinds of strange things happen to you when you sit among the crowd at this ceremony. The coolest thing was that they came around and tied a random koosu on everyone's head. Once you have your head tied, you are allowed to get up and dance if you want. You can also keep the koosu. They pass out all kinds of goodies. Various cakes, cassava bread with sugar on it, soda, beer and Palm Rum. You can drink the beverages, or get creatve with them. A lot of the rum gets poured into hands and then rubbed on heads or legs. People pour soda on heads, alcohol too. Some people spray the beverage of choice onto other people. At some point boys came around with what is called Peppe Wata (pepper water) and used leaves to flick it on people's heads. It doesn't burn unless it gets into your eye. One lady kept forcing people to take giant gulps of Palm. People get very drunk after enough time. Eventually, the young men appear, dressed in masks and covered from head to toe so you cannot recognize them. They mostly run around and scare the kids, but also dance with people and do inappropriate things on the dance floor. It's a crazy day. And good times are had by all.

Outside of the Limba Uwii, we had a good time in the village. It's really big so I felt like I could get lost at any time. We went to the museum, saw the biggest wankie on the river, hung out with the wood carver guys, and had an all around good time.

This blog is more work-related

Hello again, everyone!

I'll expand a bit more on my work here as a Peace Corps volunteer, since I have gotten some questions about that from the few of you that I can keep in contact with.

Peace Corps has mandated that we not begin any work in the first three months of our service. I have been faithful to that, except to continue the work on the toilet project that my predecessor passed on to me. Which is progressing nicely. My counterpart will be coming in to the city to receive a check with the donated money soon. Together, we will begin purchasing raw materials. I had some trouble motivating the village to pull sand out of the river, since that was a part of what the community had promised to contribute to the project. I tried to make the community meet several times until I gave my counterpart the job of getting people together to do the work. He finally got them to pull the sand. (Lesson learned: PCV's should be behind the scenes. Pick a local, trusted leader to get people on board with the project.)

Since I've come to the city, the focus has changed. All of a sudden, talk revolves around our future projects. We've been shown how to write proposals for grants, how to assess the community we live in for potential projects, and how to use the resources and databases that are available to us. We also spent time learning about Edutainment from a group of Jamaican entertainers, as well as learning about education through sports from an organization called A Ganar. In fact, we were playing with the most ingenious thing in that session. A soccer ball that never goes flat! I thought is was fascinating, so I found it on the web so you guys could enjoy this:

http://oneworldfutbol.com/the-simple-power-of-a-durable-ball/

This ball was invented in Oakland, CA (yay NorCal!) and is made out of the same material they make crocs from. You can puncture it and it will retain its shape. The site I linked to has some cool media on the animals that have chewed but not destroyed this ball. Also, I played with it, and it was AWESOME! I can't wait 'till someone from Peace Corps starts a project in which people can buy these soccer balls to send to our villages. As of now, we'd have to buy one and send it to my address, and then a second one would be donated to an organization of your choice. But not Peace Corps. Poop. I'll let you know if that changes.

Anyways, I think indestructible soccer balls would be an incredible gift to villages in Suriname, since they are always destroying their balls and having to buy more. Usually, the kids play with whatever they can find, which often means a citrus fruit of some kind. I would love to find a way to bring these soccer balls into the village. (Hmmm... Project idea?)

Time to get back to work! Until next time.

Adjusting to Noon-time Naps

Hello again. I'm back in the city for what they call early service training! I'll be in the city for two weeks, which is quite a lot but I'll be taking classes most of the time. Don't worry, though, I found time to blog!


Life has been both incredibly slow and moving way too fast. I usually get up around 7 AM, which is late, according to Saramaccan standards. I once got reprimanded by my neighbor for waking up at 8 AM because, according to her, I would miss all the news about the day if I got up that late. They like to get up at the break of dawn, get the fire started, cook a giant pot of rice and some veggies before it gets hot. They will eat out of that pot for the rest of the day, or else they'll make a little more in the evening.

So once I'm up, I'll take a bucket bath, rub mosquito lotion all over my legs, and get dressed. I'll sit down for a breakfast of oatmeal and tea (with milk and sugar. Horrible habit, I know). By the time I'm ready to move around, it's probably around nine AM. I usually try to find a reason to walk across the village at this point, as it is customary to ask everyone how they woke. Most days I walk to the river to do my dishes from the day before. If I have nothing to do after that, I walk back to my house. I often do come across someone who is doing something I can join. I have some neighbors that are often sitting and sewing together. I'll sit with them and listen to the gossip (which I can't really follow) and just take in the voices. Other times someone will be making cassava bread or pounding rice and it will become the focal point of the neighborhood and a good excuse to hang out. Some time around noon I get hungry and cook something for myself. Half of the time I cook a lot so that my neighboring Peace Corps Volunteer can come over and have dinner with me later. The other half of the time I go to his house for dinner. But there is a period from 12 to 4 when the sun is so incredibly hot that I cannot get myself to walk around. If I am not already doing something, I'm usually home and in my hammock on my porch until the sun is bearable or the kids have annoyed me enough to get me out of the hammock. Evening time is another chance to walk around the town, and I often find a reason to get out of the house for it. Then I have dinner and wait for someone to come get me to go do something fun at night. People like to come over and ask me for a taste of what I cooked (that's a Saramaccan thing. I could try to mooch off of my neighbors too, but I haven't gotten used to that idea yet.) Else I just sit in my house and read or close my front door and chill by myself for a bit. As relaxing as my day sounds, I occasionally have days when I just need to chill out and destress. Trying to talk in a foreign language and having to please all these people can get to you.

Of course, there are lots of other aspects of my life, like my cat, who likes to wake me up in the morning by rubbing his scent glands on my nose and purring into my ear. Or like the 13 year old girl who likes to come over and sit at my house and make me read the AIDS awareness poster to her in english. Or the countless young men that find excuses to come over to my house and ask me for my hand in marriage even though they have one or more wives already.

But all in all, life is an outdoors activity and work is to socialize and integrate into the community. I try to walk around as much as I can stand, as I have barely started to get to know people, and they can all tell who I am from a mile away. I find that getting close to people is closely related to how much time you spend with them, so I make efforts to get lots of exposure. And that's my job right now!

I would like to write a little something about my good friend in the village, Sikowtu, which translates to"police" in english. Sikowtu was one of the first kids to come over to my house in the evening and make me feel like I was a part of things. He and the other teenagers would sit on my porch and talk about relationship stuff, as teenagers do. And I would try to follow the conversation and feel so very pleased that they had chosen my house to hang out since I didn't know anyone at that point. Then I started lending my ipod to Sikowtu. He would come over in the mornings and I would know to have it ready for him, and if there was something going on that would be of interest to me, Sikowtu would tell me about it. He led me around the village when I was still getting lost there. He charged my phone when there was no electricity for a few days. When school got out, he took me to the ceremony the kids held. Usually, things here happen on a last minute basis, and if you miss the memo, you can easily just not hear about a current event. Sikowtu acted as my messenger. And in the evenings, he would bring back my ipod. Also, when I asked some locals about fixing my roof, and they were about to charge me an arm and a leg, he just butted in and offered to take me to the jungle to teach me about how to cut leaves for the roof myself. So we hiked into the jungle, chopped trees down with machetes and carried giant piles of leaves on our heads to get them back to the village. It was awesome. And I would never have gotten to do it if not for Sikowtu. He has even taken me to go play soccer with the boys. Sadly, he has since gone to the gold mines in search of riches. He has said that he will come back to the village in December, but I have a feeling a young man will get caught up in whatever opportunity comes his way, so he might be gone for a long time. When he left, people kept asking me if I would miss him, and every time, I said: YES. So this is my little ode to a dude that made my life as an outsider just a little bit sweeter. Cheers to you, Sikowtu.

Wow. Back in the city.

To everyone who is reading this blog and who took my project and my request for money seriously, THANK YOU! The money was just rolling in. We have already met the required amount, and will now be able to start construction on the toilets! Updates on that to follow.

And now for a little update:

For the last 5 weeks I have made my new home in my little house in the jungle, among the most heartwarmingly friendly people I have ever known. When I wake up in the morning, it is often to someone yelling my name through the walls of my house to see if I'm up. I don't respond, for the sake of creating SOME semblance of boundaries, but I secretly love it. Children here are always testing my boundaries, often poking me or touching me and then looking guilty to see if I'll do anything about it. Mostly, they just have nothing to do, and need some structure. Which is why I have taken to giving them little chores to do if they come to my house. It keeps them out of trouble. Kids can be sent to do your dishes at the river (but bewarned, the little ones aren't very thorough), to throw things onto the trash pile in the "jungle" behind the house, to sweep the porch, and other things. They are very eager to do chores here. It's one of the few things a kid here can do to get some positive reinforcement. Mostly they get yelled at, which is understandable, as there are far too many kids and far too few adults hanging around this village. (Work opportunities often exist mainly in the city, or require you to move around.) And, well, people here have lots of kids.

Since I've been in my village, I have experienced so many things that I would have loved to have shared with people back home. I've gone to "Baka Seei" (grounds, for subsistence farming) with three separate families. Around here, the female head of every household is in charge of her own "kondre" (country). If you follow a path into the jungle, the kondre's are scattered on little hidden paths off of the big path. Your kondre is a little home away from home. You might walk about 2-3 hours to get to your kondre. Barefoot, carrying everything you'll need on your head, wading through creeks, and balancing on logs, or pushing a wheelbarrow on a log over a river. Four-year-old's have been outperforming me in this department. Once there, you will find two or three little structures. One for sleeping, one for cooking, and sometimes one that is a little raised off the ground for food storage. You'll also build a little shade-structure in the middle of your fields for mid-day cooking and shade. You probably have a hammock and some dishes and food waiting for you there too. When you go to your grounds, you might go for a couple of hours, or you might stay there overnight a few nights. I have done both, every time an adventure. Right now is the season for harvesting rice, so I learned how to do that, and how to find potatoes in the ground, and which okra to pick and which to leave. Needless to say, I am learning a lot.

I have also been fighting the good fight against the evil mice. Even when mice can't find anything edible in my house, they will find something plastic to destroy. The things that I have had to part with due to mouse-destruction include: my wallet, gardening gloves, a mirror (really?), several articles of clothing, a dishrag, the lids off of several plastic containers, and they even chewed the buckets that I keep my food in (which they're not supposed to be able to get into). I have decided to get a cat to join forces with my side. Wish me luck.

And so, everyone, it is time for me to part with you for now.

Talk to you soon!

Today's the Day!

By the way, I uploaded a very few pictures onto my picasa site. Enjoy.

ALSO, check out the episode of Bizarre Foods, Suriname. For all intents and purposes, the village you see in the show could be my own. The girl who is translating in the show is actually Amber, a volunteer that has just completed her two years as a PCV, and she speaks the language that I will be attempting to master too. Watch it!!! You will get a very good idea of what my home on the Upper Suriname River is like.

Today I officially become a Peace Corps Volunteer. I take the oath that every government worker takes (from what I hear.) I am sitting in the Peace Corps office, which is the only reason I have access to a computer at all. As you know, I managed to break mine, and now I have only 2 days to try to remedy the situation. Maybe I can get a keyboard that is USB connected. If I cannot buy this here, I will give a shout out to my friends in the US with all the connections. Keep your ears peeled.

I also have an announcement to make. The volunteer that was previously in my site has left one of her projects unfinished. She is trying to get my village some pour-flush toilets. My village is on a river, and is surrounded on all sides by another, larger village. As of now, the villagers have no real waste disposal system. People either find a spot in the jungle to poop in, or use the river. This is not a feasible method of waste disposal since the river is also the main source of drinking water and is used for cleaning dishes and clothes too. Pour-flush toilets are a more sanitary solution. Effectively, we are hoping to promote a change in behavior with the addition of the toilets.
My predecessor has worked hard to realize the whole thing. She has been seeking funding for months now with no luck from any of the organizations that would be able to fund the whole thing. So now she has taken the matter into her own hands and asked friends and family at home for some help. As my predecessor is now officially passing her village on to me, I have agreed to take on her project as well. I will seek the funding and hopefully witness the creation and use of the pour flush-toilets.
As an official volunteer now, I am making a first request for donations from you, my family and friends. Your money will be directly applied to the cost of wood, nails, cement, and the like. The blood, sweat and tears will be provided for free by the people in the village. They have agreed to contribute not only by pulling sand from the river bottom for cement, but also by building the toilets themselves. Everything else we have to buy.

If you would like to help me out with my first project, I would be incredibly grateful. Here's how to do it:
- Go to www.peacecorps.gov
-Click on Donate to Volunteer Projects
-Search for project number: 568-123 (The project will still appear under the last name of the previous volunteer, Cook.)
-Enter how much you are interested in donating!

I would love to see my village enjoy the benefits of this project. I hope you feel the same!

Whew

Hello everyone. A lot has happened since I last updated this blog! I am now in my last week in the city before I get sent out to my new site! It sounds like I will have to stay at site for 3 solid months, since that is Peace Corps policy. Since I have last updated this blog:
1. My computer broke. I have hope that it's just a loose wire and that my fellow Sur 17 friend can do some surgery to fix it.
2. I have decided to get a cat when I go to my site.
3. I was on stage at the US Ambassador's house with Suriname's President Bouterse, and subsequently saw myself on tv the next day. (They were celebrating the PC's 50th anniversary.)
4. I got to celebrate Keti Koti (Emancipation of the Slaves) on July 1st with my host family. They got all dressed up to go to church, and would have done some extensive partying if it had not been for their mourning. Hairdo's become a focal point of a woman's outfit on these occasions, and I wish I had taken some pictures of the elaborate hairdo's I saw on that day.
5. I took my language proficiency test and have officially passed. I am all set to get sworn in on July 13th! I have to buy everything I will need in the next three months between then and when I leave for my new site on the 16th.

I hope all is well on the home front.
Peace Out! Hope to see you all again in 3 months!

Yay Travelling!

So I have 15 minutes for this blog. I will be quick.

Last week I spent a week staying in Hermansdorp with my host mother, Elsje. She has a daughter who lives in Paramaribo to go to school. (If you want any education in Suriname, you have to move to the city. It's a big problem for people living in the interior.) Elsje has no husband but was acting as mother to Ifna, a 13 year old who was somehow related to Elje, but relations are so confusing in this culture, I'll never figure out how.
Hermansdorp is a religious town, which is rather developed, for what I was expecting. I had a bed, a flush toilet, indoor plumbing and electricity. People here often have unlimited access to groundwater, so they just waste water like there is no such thing as drought in California. If you walk down the only road for like 40 minutes, you hit a place that is completely opposite to hermansdorp. The houses are scattered around with no roads, everyone has the same front yard, the houses are only for sleeping and there are outhouses and you wash at the river or in a wash house.
My mother was not very religious (though the rest of the town goes to church 2-3 times a week)and she had had so many previous volunteers that she knew exactly what to expect to have to teach me. I learned that real saramaccan women do not squat when doing yardwork, they bend at the hips. I cleaned her yard for about 3 hours like that. She worked at the B.O. which is the government office, and was thus busy until 3 pm daily. I did, however, get her delicious cooking when she came home at noon to cook for me. Saramaccan cooking utilizes 2-3 cubes of maggi, MSG in powder form, AND salt. We almost died. And this all despite our doctor warning these women that PC volunteers can't eat too much salt and MSG.
I had my rough moments this week. I was pretty overwhelmed with my 3 weeks of language experience and living at someone else's house. But, I survived, and I feel much more prepared now that I've been through it.

This next week I will be visiting a current volunteer at their site, and then my OWN future site!!!! I am very excited to get a chance to see where I will be living for the next two years. After that, I'll be back at the training facility for 2 weeks. I'l lbe able to give a more detailed update then.

that's it for now!

This was bound to happen

So, I have had my first encounter with the Peace Corps Suriname doctor, Doctor Legiman. We call him doc. He is a little asian-american man who has a hilarious personality. Don't get me wrong, we have seen him around the training facility quite a number of times now. He gives lectures on STD's and Creepies and Crawlies. We now have a running joke about the SIKA fly that lays eggs under your skin and you have to wait a week before you can pop the wound and pull out the baby growing inside you. (This, as it turns out, is one of the least worrisome bugs, as it has a limited effect on you. I won't get into the more gruesome ones.)

I have also already had to endure 3 shots! And I was lucky because I apparently am up to date on my Hepatitis A and B shots. There is at least one more shot (the last in the 3-series of rabies shots) but more likely is that there will be up to 5 more for me.

But this time, I had to call Doc to come see me. Yesterday, I thought that it would be a good idea to do sprints running backwards. Of course, I promptly tripped myself, went flying and landed on my elbow. It is now very bruised and painful to twist in one direction. So I called Doc to come see me and tell me that I didn't have a fracture. He said it looks like its all soft tissue damage, so that is good. Tomorrow, I call him for an update, and in the mean time, I got a strong anti inflammatory. Being injured is no fun. Try putting your hair into a pony tail with one arm!

Tomorrow, I have to present a 45 minute presentation on Nutrition. My partner and I have to do a lot of work on that tonight, so I will be busy with that today too. We are some of the last people to go, having seen everyone else's presentations last week and this week, so we have a lot of pressure to use lessons we've learned from others in our own presentations.

On sunday, we depart to our host families for the week, and we might not have internet. Shortly after that, we go visit our future site for a week. All in all, I might not update this blog for a while.

Think of me, as I take my malaria pills and have vivid dreams because of it, and as I have awkward moments with host families and such.

Gotta go!

Camp Suriname

Staying in Lelydorp is starting to feel a bit like camp. We spend all day in our various language classes, and all evening learning about Suriname. We all go to the kitchen to eat breakfast in the morning, and we get a 2 hour break to go to the nearby restaurants for lunch. Then we try to do things together, often using the last bit of sunlight to play a game of soccer or kickball. I am quite skilled at soccer compared to these kids, which I was surprised about, but is a nice ego boost. And I am learning a lot of baseball strategy by playing kickball.
Although we are adults, we got in trouble by the country director this weekend because someone brought an outsider to the training facility late at night. I am definitely in agreement that whoever it was was not thinking straight, but I can't say that it didn't make me feel like I was five when we all got a good talking to.
Camp Suriname is pretty nice and all, but I am starting to feel like I am in a bubble, protected from the real world that lurks in the distance. We are always listening to people tell us about what we will encounter and what will be expected of us, but there is not an inkling of any of that yet. That being said, we are scheduled to make our first one-week homestay trip next week. We are all very excited to finally get to be in the mix of things. A lot of the girls will be expected to wear Pangi's (the skirts we bought last weekend) for the first time ever, so that will be an experience. Then there are the awkward things, like that fact that Saramaccan's don't really have mealtimes and don't often eat together, and DEFINITELY don't talk while eating. I'll report back on that one. There's also the fact that my host mother is supposed to teach me to wash my clothes by the river and wash myself as well. They are big on hygiene, especially in the private area, and I am told that many of last years volunteers got a one on one lesson from their host moms on proper downstairs washing techniques. That should be awkward. Even more so because it will involve a lot of hand gestures and failed attempts at communication.

Oh, by the way, the address I was given was incorrect. I am told that the mail has been delivered, even with the incorrect address, but just in case, here is the real one:

Peace Corps Suriname
Attn: Alissa Kispersky
P.O.B. 9500
Franchepanestraat 12-16
Paramaribo, Suriname
South America

It is time for me to go now! I am loving the comments you guys are leaving so keep it up! Also feel free to ask me about any certain aspects of my life here that you want to know about.

See you next time!